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• gamedeal user

  Dec 1, 2017

  A number of reviewers made the same points, so I will be brief. The good: -Looks nice. -Feels like a great game, especially during the first 5 hours. -Army customization, upgrades and different weaponry are nice touches. The bad: -The AI is broken in various ways. For instance, it often charges irrationally, and seemingly to make up for this the developers gave it some super powers. -Cavalry is useless, even against lone skirmishers or undefended artillery units. You are always better off investing the money and manpower in an infantry unit. -Battles are heavily scripted, to the point of having a broken logic. You are supposed to defend a position. You do it and thanks to the AI's suicidal charges, the enemy gets almost completely wiped out or routed. Then the game hits a point in the script and you are prompted "Our position is being overwhelmed! We must fall back to that place!" Then the script magically teleports your whole army to the hill behind the position where you were doing just fine. Then you watch the comedy of the enemy trying to charge your new position with 10% of its starting force because you had killed or routed the rest before your position was "overwhelmed." The ugly: -No matter how badly you beat the AI, it keeps making up its losses and more. This renders your actions completely inconsequential. After 50 or so hours, (or sooner if you are smarter than I am) you realize that you are not playing a strategy simulator. You are instead playing one of those clicker flash games in which the numbers keep increasing as you upgrade your skills but nothing else changes because as your income increases so do the cost of future upgrades. If that sounds too abstract, here is the same point made in concrete gameplay terms: I first played two campaigns with CSA. The first time when enemy kept making up their losses regardless, I thought "Well, I am a noob. So, I didn't beat them hard enough in the beginning. That's why they recovered." But then I played the same campaign again. Even in the easiest difficulty and right after I consistently mowed down 70% of the Union army battle after battle, the next battle they always had 10k more soldiers than they did before. Then, I said "Well, they are the Union after all. They had a larger population than the rebels" and I tried out the Union campaign. Who knew the South could replace 200k+ losses and keep pressing towards the DC? I didn't. They kept coming, their numbers kept swelling no matter how many I killed. The Verdict: I wanted to like this game. And to be honest, I enjoyed it for many hours. But the enjoyment was in part due to the illusion created by the game, the illusion that my actions and decisions mattered. Once the illusion was shattered by the realization that no matter how well I play, the AI will be able to match and raise my hand, the enjoyment was replaced with disappointment and frustration. Overall, I would have to say, the experience ended up being negative. PS: I aslo want to respond to a common objection to negative reviews with many hours: "You played it for 70 hours, how bad can it be? Grow up and get a life!" It is possible to enjoy something in the short term although the enjoyment is replaced by discomfort after a while. If you think that this is impossible, try telling that to a heroin addict who wishes that he had never done that first shot.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 4, 2017

  I've been playing this game off-and-on since its release and generally I enjoy it! I think this an all-around great RTS. However, I have a bit of a concern about some of the historical battles. They seem to be FAR too scripted based on historical events, leaving little room for real player strategy. For example, in the Stones River battle, as the Union, I managed to to the CSA left flank and ball up his army against the river by the end of the second scenario of the battle (which extends to first scenario). However, by the third scenario, the game basically tossed away all my gains, balled my army up on the road, and left me with CSA troops on three sides (presumably per the history of the battle). It basically made all my efforts futile. In a second, more recent example, during the Chancellorsville scenario, I managed to secure both the Plank Road objectives with the Union Army on the second scenario (the Stonewall Jackson flank attack scenario). But, like Stones River, by the third scenario my army was balled into a haphazard perimeter around that farmhouse per history and all my gains were lost. What made it particularly worse was that after I won the third scenario, I had to RETAKE all that ground I had already earned. What's the point of fighting these battles if the player is simply locked into script that decides the outcome regardless of how well I do? It's very frustrating. . . .
• gamedeal user

  Dec 23, 2020

  I've never seen a game achieving it's main purpose so well: If you read the forums, a true 'Civil War' is about to erupt among its community around one specific issue. Sadly, in this game, your main enemy isn't the Confederate or the Union. It's really: The clock! Fans of this 'timer' say it keeps the game more challenging. I personally side with the other camp and think that, on a game that is so realistic and slow-paced, this very tight timer set for each battles forces us to neglect the strategic aspects, and way too often just run and charge the enemies like chicken with no heads (or cavalry with no horses I should say!) It's sad because the solution is very easy: Like the Total War series and so many similar successful games, why not just making it optional?! How can that bother them, or the community in general, if I prefer a slower and more realistic pace with no time limit, when I play offline and all by myself?!! But outside of this much debated issue, which definitely causes me to play it much less than I normally would, the game is otherwise fantastic! It runs well without any issues. Graphics are great. Sounds are very realistic. And trust me, those 'puffs' of smoke coming out of the guns of an entire division when they fire (and the corresponding enemy units falling in front of them) during each salvo....are borderline 'orgasmic'! ;) A very rare and unique masterpiece, both for the genre and the historical era! And as such, very easy to recommend! (JUST - REMOVE - THE - (darn) - MANDATORY - TIMER !!!) :)
• gamedeal user

  Mar 17, 2017

  I want to recommend this game because I have enjoyed the time I put into it but I can't, at least right now. 1) The scripting of the battles and the larger campaign leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, at Shiloh as the Union, I held the CSA at the first battle line. The game then said "fall back to this line" and I said "rather not, doing fine here." It keep telling me to fall back. I killed all but ~800 of the CSA army. Day 2 starts and I have an army of 25,000 facing their 800 - but I've bet set back to the edge of the map at Pittsburg Landing. Why? Also why did the AI engage on the second day? 2) The larger campaign has these same problems. I was playing the the series of battles in the Peninsula Campaign as the Union and won each one by huge margins. And the next battle would load - a holding action to cover our retreat. Why are we retreating? I've inflicted massive losses on the AI but am retreating because that is what historically happened? This leads to a cognitive dissonance. I have control over the units on the battle but what the units do doesn't matter because the next events are all pre-scripted and rigid. If we allow the player to deviate from history in the battles (e.g., by winning or inflicting massive losses in an ahistorical way), it doesn't make sense to have the next battles be bounded by history. A battle, like Gettysburg, happened because of what happened at Chancellorsville. Having Gettysburg occur in a reasonably historically accurate way after a union win at Chancellorsville just doesn't make sense. Without a branching or dynamic campaign, it feels pointless to win/lose/draw the battles. 3) The scaling. I understand the importance of the scaling to keep the game challenging but it needs some sanity bounds. If I inflict near-complete losses on the AIs army, they need to start the next battle with similarly low solider counts. The soliders could be better under the hood (harder to kill, better shots under the reasoning that some of those who survived did so for a reason) but to inflict 80% losses and then see the army with near 100% or more than 100% recovery at the next battle just doesn't work. 4) Broken mechanics, specifically the AI's ability to run everywhere and do endless melee. Also the endless melee. It seems to have gotten worse. I recently watched a battle as the AI charged my lines. The targeted unit had a 2 to 1 or more advantage over the AI in troops, was totally rested and had 100% morale. There was no attempt to soften the target with rifle or cannon fire - just a charge. The AI unit was routed and it retreated about 300 yards, regrouped and then came back and repeated the charging process. Elsewhere on the battlefield, an AI unit charged an approximately evenly matched unit, again totally rested and ready to fight. The AI did this charge up a river bluff and without any other prior engagement. They just saw my unit on the top of the hill and went for it. They had 2 batteries of arty that could have been deployed and another unit or two that they could used to provide some fire or attempted a flanking move. Nope. They just went for a headlong frontal assault. Which failed, lead to a rapid regroup, repeat and eventual sucess. Basically, once the AI sees a unit, it charges. There seems to be no regard for the unit's relative strengths or the tactical situation. This is a larger problem because the AI can charge over near-infinite distances and doesn't suffer issues with dropping condition in melee/movement/battle (at least as far as I can see). Melee itself is broken (sticky melee is the bane of my playtime). The AI also doesn't have the persistance that your army does - high losses are okay because they are reset as soon as the battle is over. So there is no reason for the AI to not meat-grinder its units into your lines. This just results in tactically uninteresting battles. "Oh, there is the Rebel corps I was looking for - they are running across 2 miles of open ground in a charge for my center. Despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and me having a strong position." 5) "Magic hill syndrome." The game has this by the truck load. The reason the hills became important on a field was because of the actions taken by the armies on the field. Suppose for some reason that Meade had set his line far to the east of Gettysburg and Lee had choosen to attack him there. Would Little Round Top have mattered? No. The hills and strong points became important in the tactical context of the battle - otherwise they are just as unimportant as the hill down the road from your house. But that isn't how the game treats the hills. You absolutely must hold certain points on the battlefield because they were tactically important in the historical battle - regardless of their importance in your current battle. Kill and rout the AI but fail to capture the magic hill in time? Draw or defeat are your only options. The AI is aware of these magic hills. I was playing Antietam and pushed the CSA back to the limits of the town of Sharpsburg. Both of our armies were very beat up. The only points on the battle that mattered tactically were where we were fighting to the NE of Sharpsburg. I'm getting ready to do a slight flanking move with my cav and notice the AI is marching a unit towards the VP at Dunker Church. That point has no value - the AI is about to have several units encircled to the NE of town and the first few blocks of Sharpsburg. But the AI is like "hey, Dunker Church is undefended and historically important, so we should capture that. The actual tactical situtation on the ground is irrelevant." Eventually, every playthrough, I lose interest. Why spend this hour fighting this battle if the result doesn't matter when it comes to the battle I fight next? Or the army I face next? Or how well I fight doesn't matter as much as if I can send a unit on an end-run march to capture and hold some historically important (but not important in the context) point on the map? Hopefully some patch comes out that fixes the melee, fixes the endless charging and maybe someday a branching campaign mode. Because it certainly does not "fully depend on player actions and battle results" right now. It is almost fully independent of player actions and results. If that happens, I'll be excited to revise this review and put as many hours as I can spare into the battles.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 19, 2020

  This is one of the better historical strategy games I've played. As a paralyzed gamer, I play with a mouthstick and this game comfortably allows me to move troops into positions. For anyone with dexterity limitations and is in the market for a historical strategy game I highly recommend this game
• gamedeal user

  Apr 2, 2021

  8/8 no regr8s I want to see a Ultimate Generals: Napoleon
• gamedeal user

  Oct 28, 2017

  Edited: A new mod has been released which fixes many of these problems. Ultimate General: Civil War is a fun game when you first play it. I've even written a few guides for the game. It bills itself as an authentic historical game with good AI. At first glance, the game does all of this wonderfully. Deeper analysis of the game reveals fundamental design problems that only become visible with time. Many of these problems are known to the developers. However due to the mechanism the devs use to solicit feedback these issues remain unaddressed since early access. Other problems are more fundamental, such as a lack of true player agency (a la Mass Effect 3) Problems with the AI Once you get past being beaten by the AI in the beginning and get used to the quirks of the game then the advertised 'strong' AI vanishes. Each map basically devolves into one of two strategies depending on if you are on offense or defense. The challenge the AI provides against you is not in the AI being smart. Rather the challenge is in the sheer numbers the AI has versus you. The problem gets worse if you play on half speed. With careful micromanagement, it's possible to defeat armies with 5x the number of men you have as well as drive back the relentless AI charges (if you aren't playing offensively that is). You can even cancel AI charges if you do things right. The AI pretty much always reacts the same way to you and it is easy to learn how the AI reacts and do the same thing every game. This is a regression from UG:GB where the AI had different personalities and acted differently. Problems with Game Mechanics Some of these problems with AI involve various bugs. These include AI breaking charges if you reposition units, AI favoring charges even if the unit is exhausted (which you can halt the advance by micromanaging artillery). Others are more fundamental. For example, early on in early access the AI had problems defending their artillery. So the game devs, instead of making the AI better at defending their artillery, made artillery invincible to melee. Similar examples of game mechanic problems exist elsewhere. Melee mechanics were broken since early access. 2 brigades of 200 men in melee will perform 4x casualties as 1 brigade with 400 men in melee. Thus, some players (in a single player game mind you) liked to stack lots of tiny cavalry brigades and abuse the melee mechanic bug to beat battles. This bug was reported and these players complained the game was 'too easy'. Instead of fixing the broken melee system (or *gasp* asking the players to not use such strategies in a single player game), it was decided that 'cavalry was too powerful' (since this was the most commonly abused unit). Thus, cavalry got nerfed to the ground so much that the only way to use them is to abuse the melee bug. A 400 men cavalry brigade can't even chase down 90 skirmishers without getting routed. Problems with Realism These issues of game design, where bugs are not fixed but instead hidden, permeates to the entire game. It results in unrealistic situations that hurts realism of the game. Such as 750 cavalrymen who manage to surprise 200 artillerymen from the rear failing to beat the 200 artilleryman and instead being routed and losing half your men. BUT if those very same 750 cavalrymen were dismounted before engaging the artillery, then the results won't be as disastrous (AI will still not lose men though thanks to invincible AI artillery). It results in the best way of dealing with artillery being shooting them (and eating canisters to the face) rather than charging the cannons. It results in on harder difficulties having to play the game a certain way rather than having true agency. Problems with Player Agency On the topic of player agency, UG:Civil War does a poor job of this. On easier difficulties player agency is somewhat there as the AI is not gifted tons of men to produce artificial difficulty. Thus as the game goes on if you manage to defeat the AI (where the AI loses 3-5x your men) the AI won't be able to reinforce. This creates other problems such as the 2nd half of the campaign being too easy. Due to this complaint (and also due to complaints from players exploiting game bugs and AI weakness on higher difficulties) combined with the lack of difficulty levels, hard and legendary difficulties are not only incredibly broken but also unfun, a tedious chore, and lack player agency. The AI patently ignores the 'army intelligence' screen where you see how many men it should have and deploys much more men than the number shown. This means you can't play with a small, elite army that's lowered the AI army strength, no, you have to bring as much men as possible. Since the game ignores the army strength on higher difficulties there's no point to capturing or killing AI at all. Instead it's a matter of force preservation (since you only get limited recruits). As the AI is gifted a new army each time you destroy an army, the facade of player agency collapses completely. It simply does not matter what you do or how many men the AI loses. Fundamentally these problems are a result of a lack of dynamic campaign. This is compounded by game bugs exploited by players on hard/legendary that were never fixed which makes the game 'too easy' for them. Or the lack of a true dynamic campaign where you can choose to end the war early if you manage to defeat the enemy army. No, the solution chosen by the devs was to brush the bugs under the rug and just give the AI more men (or men invulnerable to their weakness such as invincible artillery). This doesn't result in a fun game. Rather it results in a game where battles become a CHORE to micromanage and abuse AI weaknesses (not to mention all the small bugs which still have not been fixed). It's not any more challenging or hard in a tactical level. Problems with Feedback One aggravating factor which lead to these decisions has to do with feedback. Due to the many different ways one can play a game, issues which may crop up for some players may not crop up for other players. Similarly, due to the vast difference between normal and hard in difficulty (different AI bouses), playstyles/bugs which may work on normal may not work on hard. Instead of soliciting feedback from the playerbase as a whole, the general impression I have from watching the game progress since early access is that a small privileged group of testers (who tend to be experts and or play using certain strategies) have their suggestions favored more by the devs. This isn't necessarily the fault of the devs, as these players are simply more active in providing feedback. This generally wouldn't be a matter if it wasn't for the fact that some of these more active players have a habit of discounting other player's problems (since it doesn't occur for them with how they play). This leads to issues where unless a problem is faced by a majority of players, problems which only affect some players are routinely ignored or outright dismissed. It also leads to poor balance changes and honestly a terrible experience for new players who are thrown into the game (eg the patches making the first intro/tutorial level harder and harder and harder to the point where new players have to go on the forum and ask for how to beat the FIRST LEVEL). Hostility to Modding Many of these fundamental issues would be solvable if there were modding support by the devs. One would think the modder DarthMod would have supported modding in his/her commercial games, having come from the modding community. Instead, impediments to modding were added on purpose to reduce the basic modding possible in UG:CW. Conclusion I would honestly prefer to play the first early game access version of the game rather than the current version of the game as it is now. I lack faith the devs will be able to fix fundamental problems based on experiences since early access.
• gamedeal user

  May 5, 2018

  While it is apparent that most people who play UG:CW enjoy it, I think there is a major misconception about the nature of the game that is the fundamental basis of some of the criticism. UG:CW is not a strategy game, it's a logistics and tactics game. Most of the gameplay is focused around leading troops on the battlefield in pre-determined battles and then using rewards from battles to develop your army for the next pre-determined battle. In the battles themselves, the player also has only minimal control of when and where units are deployed. The most strategy that the game implements is having some optional battles in the campaign and choosing which corps will be used in the battle. The tactical simulation is generally great, though its few flaws do warrant some criticism. The control you have over your units feels both effective and realistic for the time. The Enemy AI is well constructed to make battles feel difficult and to make victory feel earned. The difficulty scaling is also great as the increasing difficulty of battles keeps the player engaged, even at the expense of realism. It is not coincidental that optional battles towards the end of the game are frequently harder than earlier major battles. That said, a lot of the disconnect that is felt comes from this scaling. To make battles at the end of the campaign difficult, the enemy armies generally need to be large and well trained regardless of the realistic capabilities of the Union and Confederacy. The reason enemy casualties seem inconsequential to the overall campaign is that, to keep the whole campaign interesting, the enemy army must always maintain its strength. If this game was a strategy game focused on winning the Civil War, the criticism of its lack of realism would be very strong. Instead, this game is a tactics and logistics game that uses the Civil War as a skin. The tactics and logistics are generally great and realistic to the time. I too feel the cognitive dissonance that as the Union, I can crush the Confederacy in every battle and still take 5 years to conquer Richmond or that as the Confederacy, wiping out the Union Army at Antietam and Gettysburg doesn’t at least bring foreign intervention if not clear victory but that was not the purpose of the game. Adding real strategy and major impacts to the state of the war to the game would make the finely balanced difficulty curve the developers built irrelevant. It would also force the developers to lose realism in other places. If the game was built around the strategy of the war, the early battles would need to become unrealistically difficult for a long, well balanced game. The criticism is generally valid as the game certainly creates a sense of cognitive dissonance between how you annihilate your enemy in battle but then they have more troops in the next battle, but if you are thinking about buying the game, consider that the dissonance is not there by accident but rather is the consequence of creating an engaging difficulty curve. TL:DR - The reason the campaign feels weird is that it is about the battles rather than the war. Thus, the design focusses on a good difficulty curve rather than strong strategic realism.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 13, 2020

  One of the best strategy games I've ever played. There NEEDS to be a Napoleonic version of this, desperately.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 4, 2019

  I'd recommend this game to anyone who likes the battle system in total war empire, He also created darth mod, with that being said a modder becoming a developer and not allowing mods for a game like this broke my heart.